Re: [WSG] font standards today

[Susie Gardner-Brown]

Title: Re: [WSG] font standards today

Very interesting discussion. But it really makes me wonder – what’s the point of having a ‘designer’ if we leave everything up to the user. Isn’t a designer – graphic and/or web – supposed to be using their knowledge and experience to create something that is visually attractive and successfully promotes the client’s product/service/whatever?

Faced with the choice between the same content presented as (1) an attractive colourful graphic magazine and (2) a typewritten (courier font!) stapled bunch of pages, what would the user choose I wonder?! (not!)

But if they don’t see the first option, then they’d pick up the other, and not know what they were missing. Sure they’d get the same content, but their user experience would not be as enjoyable or possibly useful. They could quite likely not decide to pay the money to buy the product. Impulse buys certainly wouldn’t be so likely to happen <grin>

Transfer this analogy to the web, and I think it’s a similar outcome.

I know that if the user was blind then there wouldn’t be much difference. But surely on the web we can produce sites that are accessible, and still beautiful?! Blind people wouldn’t care which font was used. I guess graphic design is something for the seeing. But that doesn’t mean that they (we) shouldn’t be catered for!

Sometimes I wonder if we throw away too much with the bathwater when we go all out for accessibility.

:)

- susie


On 25/8/06 6:39 AM, "Mike at Green-Beast.com" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:

> Collin Davis wrote:
>
>> Where is the line drawn?  You've just
>> overridden a user's possible font color,
>> alignment and font family preferences.
>
>> Surely if every user's preferences are so
>> precious there should be no author styles
>> applied whatsoever [...]
>
> You just hit the nail on the head, Collin. As soon as we offer a style
> sheet, unless it's blank, we're assuming some form of control of the user's
> possible preferences. And there's nothing wrong with that in my opinion
> provided the styles given are reasonable. Unreasonable might include a fixed
> font-size, an excessive fixed width, excessively high or low contrast, etc.
> Or, the worst one of all would blue text on a white background; I really
> hate that one and can't stand it when it's forced on me. Thus I tend not to
> visit sites with that style; and that's a preference I can exercise no
> matter what the designer/develop says or does.
>
> Respectfully (to those who garner respect),
> Mike Cherim
> http://green-beast.com/
>
>
>
>
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